Numbers
by frodothefair
Summary: Bilbo finds himself tormented by thoughts of things that should not be. R&R is nice


I.

I am far too old to be thinking such things.

What is age? An unhappy circumstance – that you were born some 80-odd years after I was. A trifling, unfortunate circumstance. One that should not, by rights, stand in the way of desires that otherwise ought to be considered natural.

You are young, not yet of age, and so I dare not – cannot – touch you. It is a fortnight still before your 33rd birthday, yet you seem not a day over 20. Numbers – bah! What use are numbers, save to the clerks who know of life only what is written in their account-books?

But you are far too young, not yet 33, and I am 110, and you are my kinsman. And so it cannot be.

I watch you among your fellows - I watch you even when you do not know it. I watch you with your cousins, Merry and Pippin, and the gardener's lad, Samwise, and with others, for you are an amiable lad and have many friends. I watch you, and forgive my habit of slipping into Elvish verse, but it is then that I see you and I think, "He is a swan trooping with crows. It should not be." You are beautiful, my boy, and that you are unstained, that you seem so blissfully unaware of your own beauty – makes you all the more so. So beautiful, that I catch my breath, knowing that wherever you may stray, your home is here, with me. You are my charge, until you come of age. I care for you, and have cared always. You are mine, and will be for some time yet, for you will not run off to wed immediately after your birthday, will you? I know you too well. You are not the type.

But no matter. Even when you come of age, even if you choose to marry, you will still be mine, though you do not know it yet. Whether you want it or no. I do not have long to wait.

Silly boy – do you really think you have a say in the matter? I marked you for my own when I first touched you, and Bilbo Baggins always gets his way.

I remember. Their place was always crawling with their and other people's brats, and it was a custom with me to visit the Brandybucks on the first of each month. I came the week after your parents died. You were leaning on the gate, looking out toward the river where they had drowned – silly boy – hoping they'd come back, and I saw you before you saw me, though I was coming from the same direction in which your eyes were turned. The place was quiet as I came down the road; it must have been the hour after supper.

I looked at you, and stroked your hair, letting my fingers trace a high cheekbone, my hand finally coming to rest as it cupped your chin. You looked so much older than 12, almost Elven, for your face was tinged with an orphan's grief. And though you were 12, the sensuous curve of a lip and the temperate blue of your eyes already revealed a passionate nature waiting to be stirred. For it had not been stirred, I could tell. Not yet, though heavens knows what things went on in that place.

You shied away, hiding your face when I tilted it up to get a better look, but every time after that when I came to visit, you would always be leaning on the gate and waiting and looking upriver, long after it was clear even to you that your parents were not coming back. And when I came by later to take you away, you folded your life away inside a checkered handkerchief and followed willingly.

And so I kept you, my little hothouse flower, and gave you everything you wanted, for I loved you, like I love you still. You deserved nothing less. You were precious to me – you still are. For you truly are like a flower still unpicked, to be cherished and protected, and at times I do not know what I have done to deserve you. I love everything about you. I love your poetry and your singing, and the way you seem to float when you walk. The way you would still be tall and slender even if you wore a sheet of course linen, the way your curls fall after you have been sleeping on them, and the way your skin glows with the vigour of exercise when you return from your romps through the woodlands.

I love it when when you bring me trifles and show them off as if they were treasures, and every discovery you make, and how your eyes are like bluebells. I've loved watching you grow and stretch upward, my young flower, my beautiful boy – growing taller and stronger. Soon you will pass up even me. And I loved to guide your faltering steps, and to watch you master your elvish by degrees. I know I was harsh with you at times during your lessons, but you had a quick wit, and that, too, I found marvelous, like everything else about you. Like how you have such a lovely bone, light and thin, and hands like flower petals. Or how your fingers smell of ink and parchment, and how your fingernails are so short they look like they hurt. Or how your second toe is the same length as your big toe, and the strawberry-shaped birthmark on your left shoulder. You are mine – it was I who raised you, cultivated you. It is only right – I am the only hobbit who has the right to you.

And so it is not wrong, I think, when I dream of how your foot hair might tickle my calf as we sleep?

Oh, and the skin. Porcelain, with thin blue veins running just under the surface. It takes my breath away. That, too - is it wrong? For you are too beautiful. Sinfully beautiful. Tender skin, a virgin white, flawless and shining. There are times when I want to break that skin with my nails, watch you bleed, and wrap my lips around that rosebud mouth as you cry. I love that about you too, how little you know of pain. But no worries - I shall teach you, all in good time.

But no – the skin; it is surely your skin that I love best. That skin of yours is what keeps me awake at night, and it kills me, slowly kills me when you chance to brush against me, inadvertently, and when your smile slips into your eyes. And though you are quiet, and well-behaved, and polite, and unconscious of the sway of your tight, narrow hips, I know there burns a fire inside, waiting to be unearthed. I see much eagerness, much spirit, and I delight in it, for you are a beautiful creature. Too beautiful, in fact, to be anything more than an object – too tempting a fruit to wither unpicked.

You do not know it yet, but you shall be mine. I am old, and worn, and stretched like butter over too much bread, and the blood in my veins already grows colder and colder by degrees, but the thought of your lithe body writhing amid the sheets under mine makes me feel very warm indeed. You will be my lover. It is certain, for you have followed me willingly, and you have never refused what I have given you. It is true, your parents rest at the bottom of the Brandywine, but having lost them, you have gained not only a new and better parent, but a lover.

I am old, certainly, and you may scorn me, and so will they. Tongues will wag, and they will call me a lecher. "For shame!" – they will say. A hobbit well past his prime setting his sights on a pretty young nephew, when he ought to be the council to his tender years, and keep him away from harm. And there are times when I do think myself a monster, and shrink away, fearful that my rough hands will profane your beauty. I grow fearful that I am indeed ugly, and that you will not bestow me a second glance. It is hard for me then, to keep my desire in check, and not to cry like a wild beast. Or think of how you trust me. It would be a shame to shatter that trust. For that is how it ends, many times, in my fantasies – with you torn and bleeding on the floor, or atop the tousled sheets, stripped of all you ever had because I could not stop myself. I cannot bear to see you that way, to be the vile worm that will canker away at your beauty. And it is hard for me then, very hard, to contain myself, and reconcile myself to the fact that with what I have from you now I ought to be content.

But it ceases to matter when I remember that you are foolish, and if you cry, it will be because you are foolish. You are young, and if you do not see now, you will one day. You'll fall, having grown ripe, and I will be there waiting. For I may be old, and worn, and you may shrink from my withered body, but you will be mine nonetheless. I am not so foolish, of course, as to hope that what is left of my looks will win you, or any riches I place at your feet – though you deserve all that, and more.

But my heart may.


End file.
